Show & Tell & Using Dialogue

Most writers have been told how important it is to show not tell. This is good advice.
However it is often perfectly acceptable to tell, but it is important to remember that telling has its limitations.

Telling doesn’t have to be bad writing, but it treats the reader as a passive consumer, informing them unequivocally what is going on.

Showing lets the reader work out what is happening in the story for themselves. This makes the story into an interactive experience.

Most critically Showing requires a consistent point of view.

In order to show what is happening in a story the reader has to be given a pair of eyes and ears, and a physical position in the story.
The new writer who indulges in a great deal of telling will often have no concept of point of view and will flit around from one character to another at random.

Different types of paragraphs play different roles depending on whether you are showing or telling.

Narrative and expository paragraphs are about telling, and descriptive and dialogue paragraphs are about showing.

Narrative paragraphs can introduce the reader to a new situation.
Example: In Newtown, the school holidays were a long empty space to be filled, and every day the children hung around in the street wondering what to do. It’s perfectly acceptable, indeed often necessary, to do a certain amount of telling in this way.
BUT the purpose of telling the reader is to whet their interest – to take them by the elbow and point their attention in a certain direction. Once we’ve got their attention we need to let them come closer to the action, so they can see and hear what’s going on for themselves. That Thursday, Emma and Jacob were sitting cross-legged in the dust with their noses pressed to the dressmaker’s window. (A specific time and place has been given. And now let’s listen as well.) “Mine spider’s winning,” said Emma. “Her web is nearly done already.”

At some point we might need an expository paragraph, to explain things. Ever since the bomb went off the spiders had been getting larger and faster on their feet.

An expository paragraph is like a narrative paragraph except it is not introducing the current story but giving a quick explanation of how we got here in the first place.
This is called Back story.
A brief note on Back Story: We often start a story near the interesting part of the action, so we might need a bit of back story to explain what happened before the story started. NB If your back story is VERY interesting, you might consider showing it, instead of just telling it. If it’s boring, leave most of it out and deal with it in the minimum number of sentences possible, scattered through the text.
Because always remember, your reader isn’t interested in the boring stuff.


Dialogue paragraphs are a crucial way of Showing – inviting the reader into the action, in a way that allows the reader to judge for themselves what is going on.

The first thing to remember about dialogue is that it would be very boring if it reflected the way we speak in real life, which is very rambling and repetitive. When you have written a passage of naturalistic dialogue, go back and remove all the repetition, and you will be amazed how much this improves what you have written without losing the flavour of real dialogue.
The famous 19th century novelist Anthony Trollope maintained that no character should speak above a dozen words at a time unless the occasion truly demands it.
Sometimes there is a good reason for a protracted monologue. For instance, a character may reveal something very important about their inner motivations (ie recounting an incident in the past that has made them the way they are today), and you can’t do that in twelve words. But like a Shakespearean soliloquy, such speeches should only occur at plot turning points, because they are in essence part of the action, rather than real dialogue. (Consider the detective summing up after the mystery is solved.)

Dialogue Dos and Don'ts
Never use dialogue as exposition (“Hello Mrs Smith, how sad your husband died in that tragic accident five years ago”).

But you can use it as description (“How beautiful the fields look now the yellow irises are out.”)

Dialogue tags should not be stage directions to the reader – “I’ll do it,” he said bravely – so lose the adverbs and write: “I’ll do it,” he said. Good dialogue requires no stage directions. Let the reader contribute the adverb in their head.

By far the best dialogue tag is “said”.
In good novels, almost all dialogue is tagged either ‘he said’, ‘she said’, or ‘I said’. If you use something else like ‘murmured’ or ‘sighed’ or ‘joked’ or ‘screamed’, remember these are very visible words and don’t repeat them more than once a chapter. “Said” is best because it is an invisible word – it has no colour, nuance or image attached to it – it is a pointer word, only there to let the reader know who is speaking.

1 like ·   •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on February 11, 2014 05:39 Tags: creative-writing
No comments have been added yet.